Case Studies Customized ServiceNow Deployment Streamlines Processes and Achieves a Smaller Infrastructure Footprint

Customized ServiceNow Deployment Streamlines Processes and Achieves a Smaller Infrastructure Footprint

Overview

Our client, an industrial company with operations across the U.S., engaged with Concurrency for assistance in a shift from the company’s prior IT service management platform to ServiceNow. The organization wanted to achieve a more streamlined management processes and a smaller infrastructure footprint.

In its platform selection process, our client’s IT team was particularly drawn to ServiceNow’s capacity to provide substantial analytics and reporting. The team liked the customizations of forms and saw significant value in ServiceNow’s ability to handle updates and upgrades on an automated basis—eliminating the need, for example, to bring in an IT team over a weekend to handle a major upgrade. They also appreciated the infrastructure footprint benefits—not needing 10 servers to manage the help desk environment.

Through a series of initial meetings and demos, we explored with our client the range of potential ServiceNow solutions. IT leaders in the organization determined that its needs would be best met with a complete implementation project including incident management, change management and a custom-branded user portal for service requests.

Solution

At the start of the project, we conducted a deep-dive analysis of functional and business processes to determine our client’s needs and to take stock of all existing integrations. Concurrency’s project team included a business analyst who facilitated information-gathering to determine the optimal way to structure ServiceNow processes and forms.

Working closely with the organization’s IT team, we established a plan of action, including a detailed scope of action for project success. Key project aspects include:  

  • Implemented ServiceNow for incident management, service requests, and change management
  • Designed custom forms for user-friendliness—for example, upon clicking one object, the next-needed object appears for user interaction
  • Developed and launched custom-branded end-user portal, including custom scripts
  • Established a foundation for more complex service-request workflows
  • Integrated ServiceNow with Azure for single-sign-on.
  • Integrated ServiceNow with System Center Configuration Manager and laid the foundation for configuration management tracking
  • Conducted testing and brought the system live

When configuring the base installation, we applied corporate branding and other company-specific elements including colors, time zones, calendar integration, and user importation. As part of this base install, we connected Active Directory to ServiceNow and set up a mid-server to handle communications between ServiceNow and internal infrastructure. We created the single-sign on function to enable connections via the web or VPN to channel through ServiceNow’s website—with authentication handled end-to-end.

In our work to create custom forms for incident management, we developed scripts to handle interactions in the ServiceNow console and outside of it. We organized forms for efficiency, taking away items that were not needed and moving items around to allow for quick information access. The scripts we created allowed for a streamlined experience for users as they interacted with elements displayed on the screen, showing only the specific information needed when a given item was selected. We also set up custom email templates.

The end-user portal includes and automatic password reset function, freeing up IT staff time by eliminating the need for calls from users.

The project resulted in a more powerful and more streamlined service management solution for our client and laid the foundation for continuing work to build out automations for a wide range of IT workflows.